TOLEDO, Ohio — The fiber arts, including knitting and crocheting, have become more popular among younger generations in recent years.
The Toledo Museum of Art is keeping up by bringing inspiration from a different form of art to your next sweater, hat or scarf.
Step inside TMA's Museum Store and you'll find all sorts of unique items. Works of art by local artists, plenty of glass, but also some yarn and not just any yarn.
"These are an exclusive for Toledo Museum of Art so you can only get them here," Heather Blankenship said.
She's the Retail Operations Manager for TMA. It's her job to keep the store stocked with items you won't find anywhere else.
She came up with a way to showcase the fiber arts by working with a small yarn-dying company in Ontario, Canada to create a selections of skeins, inspired by pieces from TMA's collection.
Monet's Antibes Seen from La Salis, van Gogh's The Wheatfields and Signac's The Grand Canal.
"We really try to appeal to everyone in all different ways and we're always looking for something that we find interesting and new," Blankenship said.
The yarn was created by hand-dyeing them from the exact pantone colors found in each work of art.
Each skein is a serenity silk, 75 percent Superwash Merino Wool, 15 percent cashmere and 10 percent silk. It's a light fingering weight yarn, about 500 yards in length.
"It made complete sense to have something that's so creative like working with yarn mixed with something like the colors in paintings and quilts," Blankenship said.
The yarn became so popular TMA added another work from its collection: Bisa Butler's The Storm, the Whirlwind, and the Earthquake, a quilted portrait of Frederick Douglass.
"That's probably been our most popular skein," Blankenship said. "The colors of that were so completely different. They were bold and so beautiful."
Blankenship says the museum has seen a boost in interest across all ages of people interested in the fiber arts, so the museum will continue keeping up with the demand.
You can snag some of the yarn at the Museum Store Wednesdays through Sundays. You can also buy online here.
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